Intersectionality and Family-Friendly Policies in the Federal Government

• Date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399715623314
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Author: Norma M. Riccucci,Madinah F. Hamidullah
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2017, Vol. 49(1) 105 –120

© The Author(s) 2016

DOI: 10.1177/0095399715623314

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Article

Intersectionality

and Family-Friendly

Policies in the

Federal Government:

Perceptions of Women

of Color

Madinah F. Hamidullah1 and Norma M. Riccucci1

Abstract

This is an exploratory study that examines federal employee’s

satisfaction with work–life balance or family-friendly policies. We rely

on intersectionality as a theoretical framework to examine how gender,

race, and class interact in the formation of their views. Drawing from

the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we examine how minority

women compare with non-minority women regarding their perception

of fairness of programs and policies aimed at the promotion of work–life

balance. This topic is significant because satisfaction and participation

in work–life balance programs can have implications for overall job

performance and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that race, education,

and proximity to retirement all play a role in work–life balance (family-

friendly) policy satisfaction.

Keywords

work–life balance, family-friendly policy, intersectionality, gender, race

1Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Madinah F. Hamidullah, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-

Newark, 111 Washington St., Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: madinahf@gmail.com

623314AASXXX10.1177/0095399715623314Administration & SocietyHamidullah and Riccucci

research-article2016

106 Administration & Society 49(1)

Very little research has explored the issue of intersectionality in public admin-

istration. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), the term is

used to describe the significance of not just race or gender, but the interaction

of race and gender in the formation of worldviews. Crenshaw saw disparities

in how the law responded to discriminatory acts based on both race and gen-

der. African American women, for example, experience exclusions based on

race and gender and even class. White women, however, do not conceptual-

ize the same experiences from the standpoint of race. Intersectionality, then,

points to the challenges and complexities that woman of color face not just in

the workplace, but in everyday life.

The purpose of this article is to provide an exploratory examination of

women federal employee’s satisfaction with work–life balance or family-

friendly policies. We rely on intersectionality as a theoretical framework to

examine how gender, race, and class interact in the formation of their views

and satisfaction. Drawing from the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

(FEVS), we examine how women of color, compared with all women as well

as White women perceive the fairness of programs and policies aimed at the

promotion of work–life balance. One of the most pressing issues today,

women continue to struggle to meet the demands of work as well as child or

elderly care. President Obama, recognizing these challenges, convened a

Working Families Summit in June of 2014 that brought together members of

Congress, the media, business groups, and labor leaders to address the issues

facing today’s working families. President Obama stated that “family leave,

child care, workplace flexibility, a decent wage—these are not frills . . . They

are basic needs” (Baker, 2014, p. A17). This issue is significant because sat-

isfaction with the work–life interface has implications for overall job perfor-

mance and satisfaction.

Intersectionality Theory

Intersectionality discourse has burgeoned since it was first introduced by

Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Crenshaw illustrated through a legal analysis

that race and gender are treated as mutually exclusive categories in antidis-

crimination law; she further illustrated that this tendency was prevalent his-

torically in feminist theory as well. As a result, Black women are “erased” in

terms of social identity. She argues that this

single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization,

identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry

to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group. In other

words, in race discrimination cases, discrimination tends to be viewed in terms